HUD takes issue with Tempe home for hearing-impaired
Jul 10, 2012, 6:58 AM | Updated: 7:00 am
The Department of Housing and Urban Development is involved in a controversy over a new building that’s designed for the hearing-impaired.
The Apache Trails Living Facility in Tempe has been open for just a few months.
“It was designed to meet the needs of deaf, deaf-blind, and hard-of-hearing people,” said Erich Schwenker, president of Cardinal Capital Management, which helped develop the building.
Schwenker said while most of the residents are deaf or hearing-impaired, 10 percent aren’t. HUD is concerned because it said having too many people with the same disability means Apache Trails is violating the Fair Housing Act and doesn’t have enough diversity.
Schwenker insists that Apache Trails is open to everyone.
“It is open to all,” he said. “From HUD’s point of view, it doesn’t matter if it’s open to all. They don’t like the outcome. At the end of the day, 90 percent of the people living there have a significant hearing problem.”
Schwenker wants HUD to realize that the deaf have no other place like Apache Trails in Arizona.
HUD has yet to comment on the issue.
